How To Disable Indexing Functions in Windows XP, and Windows 7

Windows includes an indexing service that can be used to catalog every file on your hard drive, similar to the way you cataloged your CD or DVD titles into a database. The primary advantage to indexing the contents of an entire hard drive makes searching for a particular file a fast procedure, particularly useful if your hard drive contains a large amount of files and folders. The indexing service does take up system resources, and is beneficial only if you are doing multiple searches for a specific file or searching to find keywords in the contents of your files.

If you're not particular about how fast a search should take in Windows, you can safely disable the indexing service, to help speed up other operations.

Key Terms and Definitions Associated With This Article:

The following key terms and definitions are applicable to this article.

Indexing Service

Windows XP system service that indexes all files and folders on a hard drive for quicker searching.

Services.msc

A Windows application used to manage system services.

Windows Search

The primary search function built into all versoins of Windows that allows for fast file searching.

File

A computer file is a computer resource for recording data discretely in a computer storage device. Just as words can be written to paper, so can information be written to a computer file. There are different types of computer files, designed for different purposes.

Hard Drive

A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive or fixed disk is a data storage device that uses magnetic storage to store and retrieve digital information using one or more rigid rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material.

System Resources

In a computer system,system resources are the components that provide its inherent capabilities and contribute to its overall performance. System memory, cache memory, hard disk space, IRQs and DMA channels are examples.

Tips and Tricks To Optimize Windows XP

Turn off Indexing Operations

The process of indexing files on a hard disk drive improves the search speed in Windows.

Windows catalogs the contents of every file located on your computer's hard drives and as a result impacts system performance heavily.

If you don't use the Search function in Windows XP you can safely disable this feature to help speed up the responsiveness of your Windows operating system.

How To Disable Indexing Service In Windows XP

Accessing Indexing Options For File and Folder Properties of Local Disk C

There is one more way to disable indexing and it will totally turn it off. The above methods will reduce what’s indexed by Windows, but the indexing service will still be running. Here I’ll show you how to turn off the indexing service altogether, which is I’ve done and have never run into an issue where I needed it enabled.

1. Left click the StartOrb on the lower left of the desktop.

2. Open the Control Panel link on the Start menu. This will load the Control Panel.

3. In the Windows Control Panel, double left click AdministrativeTools shortcut.

4. Double left click on Services in the list.

5. You can also open Services directly by typing services.msc in the Run dialog or Start Menu search box. This will load the Services Configuration tool.

6. Now scroll down till you find either Indexing Service or Windows Search in the list of services. You’ll see it’s probably in the Started state and is set to Automatic.

Double left click on Windows Search and click the Stop button to stop the service. Then change the Startup Type to Disabled.

After this, you’re going to want to restart your computer. When you turn indexing off, you can still perform a search in Windows, it’ll just give you a message saying it’s going to be slower because there index is not running and you will see a warning from Microsoft indicating that the search service is not active.

Congratulations! You now know how to safely disable the Windows Indexing / Windows Search function service within Windows 7.